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Congressional leaders definitely don’t want the part. They’re arming members with talking points to fend off bad-news budget tales before sending them back to their districts for a weeklong recess filled with town halls, business roundtables and TV and radio interviews.

It won’t be easy, though. Journalists from Florida to Washington state told POLITICO that their editors are hungry for stories that turn bureaucratic doublespeak about automatic cuts into a human story of real-world pain — from layoffs to cutbacks in treasured hometown programs.

Ask Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who got hit with a question about the Blue Angels during a Jacksonville TV station segment of locals upset that the famed flying aerobatic team may be grounded and 30 air shows canceled if sequester takes effect. The Democrat insisted the cuts won’t happen as long as “reasonable people” figure out a solution.

“It’s a Navy town,” he later told POLITICO. “I knew a question was coming up, so I didn’t wait for it.”

The appetite in local newsrooms for that kind of story is widespread, local reporters say.

“When it comes to sequestration, I’d say it’s insatiable,” said Jim Otte, a Cincinnati-based reporter for WHIO who interviewed House Speaker John Boehner on Monday about the possible effect on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “We cannot get enough detail about what is happening, could happen or might happen.”

For House Republicans, talking about sequestration gets tricky because many in their party say the cuts are a necessity to get the federal deficit under control, even at the expense of what it will do to their districts.

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) spent most of his time during an interview with the Midland Reporter-Telegram editorial board last week talking about the cuts, warning that thousands of anticipated layoffs are a temporary pain that will ultimately contribute to the long-term good of the country. “Starting March 1, we’re going to get some quiet lives disrupted,” Conaway said.

Republican Policy Committee Chairman James Lankford of Oklahoma told POLITICO that some of the media coverage about sequestration may get a bit overblown.

“It’s always the worst-case scenario in every place,” he said. “It’s the old adage, if you don’t want a cut in local government, you always say, ‘we’ll lose all our firefighters, most of our police officers and no kindergarten teachers,’ when really there are other ways to do it. But that’s the scariest of all possible options.”

Local interest in sequester is stretching from communities with strong military or defense contracting connection to places where the federal government has a big footprint.